Napoleon's Roads Read online

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  I stare at the page, thinking of nothing I could readily say. Words, in my abstraction, begin to lose definition. The page begins to exceed its borders, becoming as wide as the sky. A white sky, as it sometimes will be in winter, and in it a flock of crows, in obscure formations. Hieroglyphs. Moving slowly.

  We dream of honesty, of openness, but openness can be lacerating. What can be more honest than a crow’s cry? What can be more open than a crow’s wings as it hovers above a cornfield?

  A.

  Over and again one comes to the City, like the death of one’s father, one’s mother, worst love, the worst or the greatest pleasure, a thing one can never adequately write about although one tries all one’s life, over and again shuffling the disparate fragments knowing that somehow they belong together, never finding the key – a place exotic and unapproachable, though time after time one comes to its gates and stares inward, through the dark, weathered timber, at the steady weight of sunlight, the slow, ordinary movements of the ordinary, familiar people on the streets within, the dogs, camels, donkeys, sheep, and the coloured awnings of the stalls, the goods being taken to and from market.

  They say that we carry deep within us a memory of all the places we have ever lived, of all the spaces that have made us their familiar, and that this memory in its turn shapes and colours the places we afterwards might dwell, but when was it that we all – that I – first entered A.?

  There are many ways of getting there. One of them is simply to set out and to keep moving until you find it. Another is to gather together all of those moments from your life so far when you have come across a site or smell or taste or thing which you have seemed to know intimately, but for which intimacy you could find no explanation, and to accept them as glimpses, as the beginnings of A. Another, of course, is to record your dreams. Still another is simply to look within – at your mind, your heart, your small daily habits, the way you shape your sentences – and to find out what kind of place it is you have hidden there. Even if that is only the faintest sketch of a place, the merest trace. Even if all that remains is the initial, the letter only in the alphabet of the mind, the lofty arch of it, that pointed attic space, the broad, hearthed room beneath it would return us to the time that gave it origin, no mere trick of rhetoric, no sleight of text, but the first letter, the beginning of all. One sees pictures of an ancient city of the Sahara, perhaps, or Kazakhstan, and says Yes, that is it. One sees a painting of Innsbruck – the cobbled streets, the outdoor market, the spires, the turreted roofs – and knows it is there too, a confluence of our deepest images and desire, a place every heart, every mind, every unconscious turn of the body somehow unknowingly knows, shaped no more by experience than by the first touch of the lip on the mother’s breast, the first glimpse of light, the first searing breath of air in the infant’s lungs, and all the cognates of these things: the first colour, the first word, the first knowledge of that other – that father – who also made one.

  Yet A. is also distinctive, also entirely one’s own. There is something arbitrary even in the selection of the initial, although also not. The letter itself occurs in word after word, as if to remind us that the beginning is always with us. But that is not why I have chosen it, if in fact I have had choice at all. I call it A., I sometimes think, because it is a city like Alexandria, or rather, since I have never been to Alexandria, what I have imagined that city to be like, from all the images I have seen of it, all the things I have read. If this makes it sound as if A. is also something in the mind, a kind of process of thought, then well and good, since any city must also be such a thing. I don’t only mean the way we carry deep in our minds the maps and shapes and atmospheres of the earliest cities of our experience, so that any subsequent city is also in some part these cities, too, since it is perceived by the mind itself that these cities first taught to see, although I do also mean this.

  There is, let us say, a harbour in A., but you need not live on the harbour. There are also hills behind the city, but you need not live amongst them. Within the perpetual alternation of the dry heat and the heavy winter rains (winter? is it ever winter there?) – in the palm-shaded courtyards, the narrow alleys behind the great central market, the airconditioned rooms of the luxury hotels – there is a considerable variety of climates and weathers, but you need not experience them. Doubtless those who live and work about the harbour think of A. as a harbour city, just as those who work high up in the hill mines think of the harbour as serving them, or those who live in the dry, flat reaches on the desert’s edge think of A. as an oasis from the heat and sand, a place at the end of a trade route, controlled by transactions that neither the harbour nor the miners consider. A. is all of these things, a different city for everyone who reaches it, a different memory for everyone who leaves.

  In a system reflecting and perhaps integral to all of these things, A. is governed, unobtrusively, sometimes almost tacitly, by an assembly of poets and philosophers – which is to say that it is hardly governed at all, in the usual way of arrangements for garbage collection, approval of roads, provision for municipal taxes (these things are left, as perhaps they should be, to administrators), but governed nonetheless, impalpably yet almost utterly. The assembly meets annually, for anything from a few days to two weeks or more, in a large hall built for the purpose almost eleven centuries ago, a building with a great cupola and high, unglazed openings so arranged as to let the dusty light fall naturally on the floor beneath it into a circle the size of which has always determined the size of the assembly. It might hold fifty or sixty quite comfortably – somewhat more if the occasion demands – but in fact there are rarely more than a dozen. I call them poets and philosophers, although these terms, loose enough in themselves, only approximate the nature and function of the legislation produced here, and might belie the very real sense in which these people are self-selected. It is not unusual to find amongst the assembly a banker, say, or a midwife, a nurse, a priest, a housewife, a cooper or a digger of drains, each of whom has found themselves called by what they themselves have construed, or perhaps it is simply realised, to be the poet or philosopher within.

  In the shadowed places far below the cupola, between the columns about the lighted circle, people gather to listen to the proceedings, almost always in silence but for an occasional murmur of approval, puzzlement or dismay. Sometimes these people are many – again it depends upon the issue – and sometimes only a few, but it is often from these shadows that a new member of the assembly comes, having attended perhaps for a number of years, sitting or standing outside the circle, and learnt, and thought, and found at last the confidence or need to step out. At which time, it should be said, they are never questioned, for this is the manner in which so many of those already there have also arrived. There is no romance in the work, no kudos, no power that one can readily utilise or see, no statesmanlike name to be made since names are so rarely carried beyond the confines of the hall. It is not for these reasons that people step forward.

  Rather, it is that their minds have been caught up in an ancient and intricate discussion, the rules and assumptions of which, contained always within the collective consciousness of the assembly, have passed down from generation to generation for over a thousand years. If the assembly is always open to the newcomer – and there are, as I have already intimated, those who enter the circle for only one meeting, or who come and go almost without notice – it is always guided by its elders whose minds, over the years, have become vast repositories of the discussions that have passed.

  The first and strongest of these rules, determining the fate and course of any new subject or idea, is that no such thing may be ventured upon without preface or precedent within the discussions of the assembly itself. All things must connect. Every new idea must be demonstrated to have its seed or origin in a previous idea; every new subject must begin in a subject somewhere before it; any new thought must be taken to the venerable river of thought that has run down, in this manne
r, through the ages. Thus the discourse itself can be seen to determine its own paths, accepting or rejecting what is brought to it by force of what it has accepted or rejected before. The poets, the philosophers who would take part in the government of the city have freedom, but only within the parameters of what the past will allow.

  This is not always as confining as it might at first appear. Individual poets or philosophers wishing to introduce new matters of concern need not themselves present the precedents required, but may call upon the collective memory. If precedent exists, one or another of the elders will find it. Nor, intriguingly, is this the sole recourse. Now and again, some say, an idea is raised that through sheer force of intellect or circumstance cannot very easily be rejected, although it appears that no precedent can be found. In which case something else may happen. A few days may pass in which the matter is not mentioned; sometimes a full year passes, or more; and then someone – it is usually but not always the most senior of the elders – will raise the matter again, having thought carefully meanwhile, and having remembered, now, something which had at first slipped their mind. A thing said by one of those who had attended only one meeting, many years ago now – probably no-one else would remember – the pertinence of which has taken some time to make itself clear. And a name will be given, or some personal detail, for such is the way these things must be. And then the elder will spell out an idea or formula, carefully constructed so as to provide a bridge between the ancient discourse and the new idea whose worth had proved so irresistible. And at this point, jogged by this forgotten link, convinced by its logic, its rightness, others will begin to recall. So that, given force enough of desire, a new idea can create its own precedent, the present augment the past, an old man – so the cynics say – bring into being someone who had never existed.

  It’s this that I have been wanting to tell you about, the invention. I had wondered all along why there were poets as well as philosophers, but in the light of A. it now seems so clear, and that in reality there is little difference, or that it is a difference only in degree; that the ancient battle between the poets and philosophers is a battle of the same. That now and again the philosophers need the poets to cover their traces, or to imagine the way that, imagined, becomes the way. And that without them it might not be the burning possibility that in the core of every one of us it is.

  This, and the ancient custom of the place, long abandoned, of the voluntary blinding and sequestrating of elders in memory of one of the earliest and most venerable of them – he who is claimed to have founded the city, and to have been blind from birth – so that thereafter they could not see the city they were asked to talk about, but only hold it in their minds, as perhaps did that first founder, never quite letting the actual city of A. eclipse the city he pursued, through all his long eldership, so ardently in his mind.

  Sometimes, in the midst of an assembly, like a reminder of something the poets and philosophers can never quite put their finger on, one of the doves or pigeons with which the streets and the eaves of the city abound will get in through a high window space and flap about in the great dome above them. People, at these times, wonder how it will ever get out, and fight the temptation to run about after it, trying to capture it or usher it through one of the lower doors, but somehow always it escapes, as often by going up and into the middle darkness as by flying back down, of its own accord, through one of the open spaces, as if there are secret openings there that no-one could reach even if they wanted to.

  THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S DREAM

  for Pat Ricketts

  A lighthouse keeper dreams that he is a man dreaming that he is the keeper of a lighthouse. The lighthouse in the dream of the man in the lighthouse keeper’s dream is not the lighthouse that the lighthouse keeper is in fact the keeper of. The lighthouse keeper’s lighthouse is on the tip of a headland on a temperate southern coastline, facing eastward, warmed half the year by currents coming down from the distant tropics and, in the rest, when the warm currents move further offshore, chilled by currents coming north from the distant polar seas. In almost every season, on calmer days, and there are many of these, dolphins come to play in the waves that wash the rocks at the foot of the low cliff upon which the lighthouse stands. The lighthouse keeper’s lighthouse is connected to a nearby highway by a long, winding road through a rainforest. Every morning and early evening, if it is not raining and there is no wind, the lighthouse keeper can hear the calls of birds – kookaburras mainly, but also parrots, currawongs, butcherbirds, and sometimes even a whipbird or a bellbird – drifting across the grassy clearing that separates the lighthouse from the edge of the forest. A few kilometres from the point where the forest meets the highway is a small fishing town to which the lighthouse keeper can go, when there is someone to relieve him, to shop, or visit friends, drink at the local pub, or see a movie at the local cinema. At other times, when he cannot go into the town himself, he can telephone to almost any of the local businesses and have them deliver whatever it may be that he requires.

  Although exposed on the headland and visible from twenty kilometres or more along the coast to the north and south of it, the lighthouse keeper’s lighthouse is not often buffeted by storms, and any heavy seas that hit the coast play themselves out more or less harmlessly upon the rocky base of the cliff. Only rarely, if there is a strong wind accompanying them, does spray from the waves reach high enough to be felt by someone standing at the base of the lighthouse itself. Beside the squat white tower of the lighthouse are two small cottages, built closely side by side. The lighthouse keeper lives in one of these; the other, now empty, was for the assistant keeper and his family, when there was an assistant keeper, before the lighthouse was automated to the extent that it now is. And behind the cottages, some fifty metres further away, towards the other side of the headland, in a small cleared space amongst the low scrub, is a graveyard in which are buried two of the previous keepers of the lighthouse, two assistant keepers, with various members of their families, and members of the families of other keepers and assistant keepers of the light.

  The lighthouse dreamt of by the man in the lighthouse keeper’s dream, on the other hand, is so isolated and so constantly assailed by the heaving of the sea that it is almost inconceivable that it exist at all. Four kilometres from the coast, built on the westernmost of the very rocks it warns passing vessels away from, the techniques, let alone the bravery, of those who constructed it have been a source of awe to all who have subsequently set eyes upon it. It seems as if the sea in this place can never have rested, never have stayed calm long enough for the first stones to be set, the first foundations to be laid, and yet the lighthouse has stood and warned sailors from its dangerous shoal for almost two hundred years. In one part of his dream the man of whom the lighthouse keeper dreams sees the keeper of this light – himself? and yet how could it be? – standing in the arched doorway set into the foot of the lighthouse, holding onto a handrail, looking up to where the dreamer looks at him. A wave half as high as the lighthouse itself – a wave of almost inconceivable force and mass – is about to crash upon it from the other side. The base of the lighthouse is at this moment like a tunnel, an alcove between monstrous walls of sea. It seems incredible that the lighthouse keeper is standing there. It seems incredible that he will survive, incredible that he will not be washed away.

  The lighthouse keeper’s life – the life of the lighthouse keeper who dreams of the man who dreams that he is a lighthouse keeper – is a lonely life, by most standards, but he is a solitary man by nature, and resourceful, and his loneliness is mitigated by the fact that he can go into the town now and again, and by the number of people who drive in along the forest road, in all but the worst weather, to visit the lighthouse and take in its marvellous view. Less than one hundred metres to the north of the lighthouse itself there is a path from the cliff-top to a small, sheltered beach below. On any warm, calm day, if he is unable or disinclined to sleep, the lighthouse keeper can go down to this
beach to swim or to sunbathe out of sight of the lighthouse and any visitors who might come to it, or can double back to have his afternoon tea upon a rock ledge almost directly below the lighthouse.

  The life of the lighthouse keeper in the dream of the man in the lighthouse keeper’s dream is very different. Although by any measure he is almost certainly more resourceful and more solitary by nature than the lighthouse keeper who dreams of the man who dreams of him, his loneliness is often a deep and cold and aching thing, that seems to penetrate almost everything he touches or that touches him – the mug into which he pours his evening coffee (for like most lighthouse keepers he sleeps by day, works through the night), the table upon which he eats his meals, the circular iron stairway to the prism, far above where he sleeps, the cramped alcove where he has his bed, the bed itself, the cold light that filters down to him in the morning as he undresses and lies down there.

  From the top of his lighthouse the lighthouse keeper looks out, for much of the time, upon calm seas and a clear view to the eastern horizon. The lighthouse keeper in the dream of the man in the lighthouse keeper’s dream, however, looks out on fury, king waves that sometimes seem as if they will douse his light, snap the strong tower of the lighthouse as if it were made of matchwood. There are days aplenty when he can see the western horizon, though very often it is jagged with storm. There are many days more when the mist or fog closes in and he must forgo anything but the most broken sleep in order to maintain the long, mournful groans of the horn that, night and day in such weather, must try to do the job of the light that cannot be seen. Although sometimes, when the ocean has taken on an eerie grey calm, a herd of sea lions has been known to appear almost a kilometre directly westward, and whales that, could they speak, might bring news of one lighthouse to the other, the paradox of this man’s situation is that the ocean which surrounds him is in so many ways unreachable, untouchable. No dolphins come to play by the treacherous rocks, no swimming or sunbathing is possible, no fishing conceivable in the seething water.